Teacher Gifts

Last week was Ella's last week of school.  I know.  She's already doing fractions.  It's crazy.


For her teachers I wanted to make something unique. She had two teachers for Monday/Wednesday/Friday and Tuesday/Thursday. Plus I wanted to do one for each of the administrators that take the best care of her! So there were 6 total.


I found my inspiration on Pinterest, the new social media hangout.  Look me up at Kristen Siler Vennekotter. 

Source: tipjunkie.com via Kristen on Pinterest

This was a pretty easy project but of course I bit off more than I could chew in a short time span.  So I enlisted some help. 

I picked up 6 terra-cotta pots and 6 trays. 

In addition to the pots, I bought black and yellow craft paint, brushes and markers that write on terra cotta. 

We put the black on the inside/outside of the pots and trays.  And the yellow paint around the rim.   The black went on in two coats, the yellow took about 5 coats! 

Once the paints dried over night, I took the markers and free handed the words on the bottom "Thanks for helping me Grow!" And also used the yellow as a measuring tape and free handed the lines. 

I bought 6 flowers.  Which kind? The pretty kind.  I don't remember the exact name. And some Harry Potter dirt.  It was Harry Potter dirt because the night after I planted the flowers the dirt expanded so that it over flowed out of the pots and all over my floor and counters!  

Magical! 

Here is the finished product! 

If You're Looking For A Cool Gift Look No Further

I enjoy giving people gifts that mean something. I love finding that perfect gift and seeing their faces light up when they open it. In that vein, I wanted to share with you my Mother’s Day gifts that I gave to my mom and mother-in-law, Shutterfly photo books.

Obviously, Mother’s Day is long gone but Father’s Day is coming up and graduations and heck, July 4 is right around the corner too! These books can be customized for any occasion. That is the best part.

First, you can choose a theme (I chose Mother’s Day/Grandma’s) or just start with a blank book. Then you choose the size you want. They have everything from 5x7 to 12x12 and then you choose either a hard or a soft cover. I choose a hard cover in an 8x10 size, which gives you 20 pages to work with.

Then you pull your photos to the Shutterfly website and save them in an album, where you can access them later if you want to do other projects. In determining how many pictures you need to move to Shutterfly, I picked 20 photos but ended up needing more because I chose different designs that included 3 pictures on one page.

Once you have all the pictures you want to use, Shutterfly has several pages of different layouts with varying picture/text formats you can pick from. Click on Page 1 to get started, you choose your layout and then drag your picture to the page. Add text as you like. You can pick different backgrounds with different colors; add ‘stickers’ to the pages or just do basic text/picture combo for the same price. There were several pages where I didn’t add text at all, as the picture took up a lot of space or text wasn’t necessary.

From start to finish, each book took about an hour to finish. It was really user friendly (although I did cuss several times but only due to my inability to watch Game of Thrones while crafting). As we live so far away from Ella’s grandparents, this is a nice way for them to have unique pictures of her. And if you’re like me and never actually print off any pictures from your cameras this is a way to get them from your computer into someone’s hands. The gifts went over very well and even Daddy has said he would like a book in the future! The final price tag for each book (don’t look Mom) was $25.00. Not bad for a unique and touching gift.

 

It's a good thing I shaved that day!










By the way, this post is just because I really like the product. I haven't received anything from any sponsors.